This invention relates in general to an apparatus and method for inserting integrated circuit sockets on printed circuit boards.
Integrated circuits are often electrically connected to signal and voltage planes of a printed circuit (PC) board by means of integrated circuit (IC) sockets. In such case, the IC sockets are mounted on the PC board with the socket pins passing through corresponding holes drilled perpendicularly through the horizontal plane of the PC board. The socket pins are then soldered to voltage or signal planes within the PC board. The integrated circuits may then be plugged into the sockets to electrically connect them with the PC board's signal or voltage planes. This method of connecting integrated circuits to a PC board enables the user to rapidly replace integrated circuits without the need of desoldering the integrated circuit to be replaced and resoldering the replacement IC.
In the prior art, IC sockets were often mounted on the PC board manually by an operator. This method has several disadvantages. First, it is time consuming since the operator must align each socket to be mounted with the corresponding holes drilled in the PC board. Second, the sockets may be damaged if the operator does not correctly align the socket pins with the corresponding holes before pressing the socket into position.
It is a general object of the present invention to eliminate these and other drawbacks of the prior art by providing an apparatus and method which speeds up the process of inserting IC sockets on a PC board.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for simultaneously inserting a plurality of IC sockets on a PC board.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for inserting IC sockets on a PC board that is particularly well suited to inserting the same pattern of IC sockets on a large number of identical printed circuit boards.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the detailed description of the preferred embodiment when read in conjunction with the drawings.